


In My Veins

by Cinaed



Category: CSI: Las Vegas
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-06
Updated: 2006-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/pseuds/Cinaed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's funny, the things you grow accustomed to, and how everything breaks down when those things are suddenly out of your reach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cement

_(Sleep is dear to me, but more to be of stone.)_

It’s funny, David muses, the things one grows accustomed to. Like how he wakes up each morning and is momentarily lost, certain that this isn’t his bed because there is no lanky form draped over him, no sleepy grin and kiss that tastes of morning breath. Like how he goes to take a shower, certain this isn’t his bathroom because there is no neon-green toothbrush, no half-dozen hair products cluttering his sink. Like how he sits down at the table, certain this isn’t his kitchen because there is no Blue Hawaiian in the coffeemaker, no half-finished bowl of Lucky Charms on the counter. Like how he dresses in his uniform of lab coat blue, certain this isn’t his apartment, because there is no Metallica T-shirt in the dresser, no pair of Converse All-Stars in the closet. 

It has only been a week since he packed up Greg’s things and left them outside the door for the other man to pick up, and yet the feeling of dereliction has not waned in the slightest. It’s as though there is a ghost in his apartment, one that flickers at the corner of his vision and appears on the back of his eyelids whenever he closes his eyes, a specter with spiky hair and a trademark goofy smile, which is ridiculous, really, because Greg isn’t _dead,_ their relationship is. 

When David moves, he feels weighed down now, as though someone has removed all the white and red blood cells and filled his veins with cement instead. Each step, each hand gesture feels sluggish, each smirk or smile on his face unnatural. It seems like he should be made of stone, somehow, rather than flesh and blood, because maybe if he were made of stone, he would not feel exhausted despite eight, nine, ten hours of sleep. Maybe he would not feel anything at all. 

People are beginning to notice at work. There have been two incidents this week where someone’s come in after he fell asleep at his microscope; he’s already been given a ‘motherly talk’ from Catherine about how he needs to get more sleep (he had to resist the urge to snap that there are so many hours in the day and that ten, twelve hours of sleep ought to be enough -- instead, he had nodded and ducked his head and promised to get to bed earlier, like a good little boy, and then popped a couple of caffeine pills in a vain attempt to stay awake). Each glance at himself in the mirror shows the shadows under his eyes deepening, and soon David suspects they will swallow up his face. He can’t force himself to care all that much. Every second is a struggle to move his encumbered arms and legs and to stir his lethargic mind to think of anything other than how weary he feels. 

But still, it’s funny, the things one gets used to. That first time, when he had awoken to Greg draped over him, snoring softly, David hadn’t thought that Greg would stay that night, and the next, and the next, until one day he had woken up and seen the neon-green toothbrush, the half-dozen hair products, the Conserve All-Stars, and realized that all his coffee was now Blue Hawaiian and his pantry was stocked with Lucky Charms, and understood that Greg was here to stay. And Greg _had_ stayed, up until last week, when David had packed the other man’s things and shoved them out into the hall, and Greg had slid his key under the door and left for good. 

David just hadn’t thought, hadn’t _realized_ that he’d become dependant on their daily routine. Without Greg, his apartment seems empty and unwelcoming, his waking hours superficial and wearying. Without him, reality has turned flat and insipid, and David longs to be made of stone, if just to stop from feeling so damn tired all the time. 

It’s really funny (in a sad, pathetic, feels-like-a-punch-to-the-stomach sort of a way), the things one grows accustomed to.   



	2. Poison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's funny, how now that it's over is when he notices the little details.

_(Wanderers eastward, wanderers west. Know you why you cannot rest?)_

It’s funny, Greg thinks, how now that it’s over is when he notices the little details. Like how he could recognize David just by his hands, with their long, graceful fingers, and by the elaborate gestures the other man is constantly using. Like how blue his eyes are, and the way they change color depending on his mood -- pale blue like the early morning sky when he is content, murky cerulean like the stormy sea when he is furious. Like how David rattles off useless facts and obsolete anecdotes at a break-neck speed, and yet despite the constant stream-of-consciousness ramblings, he never tells anything truly personal. Like how when David smiles with no sarcasm in his expression at all, it lights up his face and makes him seem almost fey, as though the other man is some mythical creature from the Seelie Court who has come to cause as much mischief as he can. 

It has only been a week since he slid his key under David’s door and took his belongings over to Nick’s to crash there until he can find a new apartment, and yet this feeling of unreality has not diminished in the slightest. It’s as though this is all a dream somehow, and that any second now he’ll wake up to a grumpy voice complaining that he’s drooled on the pillow _again._

There’s a poison in Greg’s veins now. Perhaps the toxin has been in his veins all along, lying dormant, becoming active only at the sight of all his belongings piled outside David’s apartment door, but the poison is excruciating and running through his veins now. He can feel it corroding his insides with every passing second, eating away at the bones and dissolving muscle, and it generates an itch that he can’t scratch away, like a rash underneath his skin. It makes him twitchy, and distracts him, because it seems that everyone should notice his veins blackening and hear the subtle splintering of bone and see the internal rash that he can’t touch. Maybe that is why he cannot sleep, does not _want_ to sleep -- the poison surges through his frame and its effects keep him jittery, like he’s on some sort of adrenaline high that never ends. Even after a sleeping pill (one, or two, or three), the adrenaline keeps coursing through him, and rather than feeling tired, Greg simply feels frayed, like some adrenaline-junkie who is about to do one-too-many stunts and get himself killed. 

People are beginning to notice at work. He keeps getting distracted by the ache in his chest that wraps fingers around his heart and squeezes at random intervals, and the way that there is a constant sob quivering at the back of his throat, waiting to surge up when he least expects it. Greg’s noticed Grissom giving him several curious glances over his glasses, and there have been a few vague metaphors thrown his way, and Nick has tried several times to ask him what’s going on, a question Greg keeps avoiding. When he looks in the mirror, he sees the blood vessels in his eyes and marvels that they haven’t turned black yet (he doesn’t look in the mirror much anymore). Maybe it’s all in his imagination. Maybe he’s going crazy. Then again, maybe there really _is_ poison in his veins. 

But still, it’s funny how he notices the little details now. There are so many things he took for granted when he was living with David. The first time, when he had woken up on top of David to the man’s complaints that Greg weighed a ton, he hadn’t really planned on staying that night, or the next, or the next, until one day he had woken up and realized that he had become accustomed to this daily routine, with David’s useless facts and pointless anecdotes, his smirks and his once-in-a-blue-moon smiles, and understood that he belonged here. And in David’s apartment he _had_ belonged, up until last week, when Greg had arrived to find that David had packed all his belongings (from his neon-green toothbrush to his half-full box of Lucky Charms) and shoved them out into the hall, and Greg had silently gathered his things, slid his key under the door, and left. He had gotten about halfway to nowhere before he’d had to pull over and press his face to the wheel, taking short, sharp, panicked breaths, because he had nowhere to go (no, because he knew the one place he wanted to be was unobtainable now). 

He hadn’t known, hadn’t _realized_ that his day started off with David complaining about his drool, his half-dozen hair products, with David telling him that he needs to eat something other than Lucky Charms for breakfast. Nick’s tolerant laughter, easy roll of his eyes, and amused grin at his lifestyle is like a punch to the gut in its wrongness. How had he gotten addicted to sarcastic insults and ceaseless (though insincere) complaints? Without David, life seems bland and uninspiring, the itching under his skin ceaseless and excruciating. Without him, Greg is tattered and unraveling at the seams, and Greg longs for some antidote for this poison, something to stop the corrosion of his body from the inside out, if only to be finally able to sleep without the splintering of bones in his dreams. 

It’s really funny, how he notices the little details now, and even funnier (in a the-world-is-ending, everyone-you-love-has-been-kidnapped sort of way) how he never realized that he couldn’t live without those details until it was too late. 


	3. Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's funny, how it's not until the end of a relationship that people start to figure it out.

_(By a blazed trail our love will be returning; one burning hour throws light a thousand ways.) _

It's funny, how it's not until the end of a relationship that people start to figure it out. It’s Jacqui, naturally, who first puts two and two together to get four; she fits together a timeline of David going virtually narcoleptic and Greg becoming as twitchy as a junkie and finds that the two timelines match perfectly. There must have been some sort of cataclysmic event, she realizes, but it takes her a while to comprehend what event it could possibly be, because the idea of _Greg_ and _David_ being in a relationship seemingly defies the laws of reality. 

But then she studies David, and how the shadows under his eyes are more like bruises, swallowing up his face bit by bit, and how sluggish and apathetic his gestures and speeches are now, like he really has no heart for it and is just putting on a show. And she studies Greg, and how he fairly hums with anxious energy, his movements frantic, how he seems unable to stay still, as though he is desperate for something to happen that will finally allow him to relax, and how he seems to be dying, bit by bit, while he waits. And she realizes that apparently the laws of reality are different than what she’s always thought them to be. 

It’s Nick who figures it out next; after all, he has Greg living in his home, and so sees him at all hours, watches him pace through the apartment, gaze frantically searching for something that isn’t there. He falls asleep to the sound of Greg’s restless wandering, and calculates how many hours of sleep the other man got by how many sleeping pills Greg desperately swallows before bed the next day. He doesn’t really notice Hodges’ condition until he spots the man coming from the break room after a ‘discussion’ with Catherine and notices the trace technician popping a few caffeine pills into his mouth and chewing on them with a weary grimace. Nick looks at the lines of fatigue and the expression of barely withheld anguish on Hodges’ face, at the creases of anxiety and the look of utter desolation on Greg’s, and figures it out in a burst of enlightenment that makes him almost walk into a door. 

It’s been two weeks since Greg first showed up on Nick’s doorstep when Jacqui and Nick look at each other and see the recognition in the other’s eye. They meet up after work, heads bent conspiratorially together over coffee at the nearby diner as they discuss how Greg and David (Jacqui has to scold Nick fiercely in the initial five minutes of their discussion when he calls David Hodges) are falling apart at the seams. Now they have to figure out what went wrong and most importantly, how to fix things and make their friends happy again. 

And so they do what best friends do best -- they both corner their friend and demand that he spill. Surprisingly, David is the first to break, grief-thickened words tumbling out haphazardly as he tells her how Greg had pressed one too many times, given him one too many kicked-puppy looks for refusing to make their relationship public. After all, he’d_told_ Greg about LA and what he’d gone through there, so why couldn’t he just fucking _understand_ that David didn’t trust people not to be imbeciles and abusive? And so Greg had complained one too many times, and David finally had snapped and said things he couldn’t take back, things that Greg will never forgive him for saying. Hunched over like a weary old man, David listens to Jacqui’s reassurances that fences can be mended with a tiredly cynical smile on his face, and openly laughs when she tells him that people here are different than people in LA. 

Nick, meanwhile, tries again and again to ferret the truth out of Greg, who is astonishingly closemouthed. It takes Nick cornering him in his kitchen and demanding to know who the hell messed him up so badly to make Greg knuckle under, if only to automatically defend David and then go white as a sheet at his slip-up. And then the words come rushing out like some dam has broken, Greg’s voice cracking with exhaustion and anguish as he tells Nick how David had refused to let him tell any of their friends about their relationship, how David had insisted, time and time again, that they would be ostracized if they told anyone the truth. Sure, David had told Greg about the scandal and discrimination that had forced him to leave LA, but this was _Vegas_, so why couldn’t David just fucking _understand_ that people weren’t going to be idiots and hateful? And so David had denied him one too many times, and things had escalated into an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight which had led to David informing him that if he was going to keep insisting on blabbing about their relationship, then maybe there shouldn’t be a relationship to tell anyone about, and Greg stormily agreeing that if David didn’t care enough about him to risk a few mocking looks and insults, then maybe there shouldn’t be, and then Greg had come back to the apartment to find his things piled outside, and that had been that. Quivering like some deer caught in the headlights, Greg listens to Nick’s quiet comments that there would be discrimination -- not from the crime lab, mind you, because they took care of their own, but probably from the police force and reporters -- with a pained expression on his face, and breathes out a shuddery sigh when Nick tells him that at the very, very least Nick and Jacqui will never judge them. (Love is love, he says, and Greg laughs bitterly at the empty platitude.) 

Nick and Jacqui end up back at the diner the day after Greg finally spills, heads bent even closer together as they swap notes and try to figure out how to convince the two that their relationship can be salvaged. They plot and they scheme, and in the end it all comes to naught anyway, because the next day at work Greg offhandedly outs himself. He does it without his normal great abandon; instead he does it as something to help the latest case, with a smile but without his usual flair. The unidentified victim is rich, which could have been a factor in his death, he states, adding that the shirt the dead man is wearing is by an exclusive designer in New York whose ‘cheap’ shirts cost about $300 each -- Greg’s ex-boyfriend in New York had been obsessed with said-designer and gotten into debt by blowing all his money on clothes. (There is silence for a moment, and then Grissom clears his throat and says if the designer is exclusive then that will help them find out the man’s identity, and after that everyone continues on with the investigation as though Greg has not divulged anything particularly personal and shocking.) 

Of course, that doesn’t keep the rumors (well, they’re not so much rumors as they are details, because the point was that Greg _had_ disclosed his bisexuality) from spreading like wildfire, and the smirks and comments are already starting by the time Greg goes to grab some coffee from the break room. Greg appears to deflect them with his trademark grin though, and actually laughs and tells Nick to calm down when the Texan threatens bodily harm to an officer in the hallway after the man mutters ‘faggot’ under his breath. 

It’s not until Greg gets to his car at the end of the shift and sees that all four tires of his car have been slashed that he allows his smile to falter and a sigh that is shaky and sounds more like a sob to escape his lips. For a moment he just looks at his car, and then he fishes out his cell to call a tow truck. Before he can dial the number though, someone moves to stand next to him, close enough that their shoulders touch lightly. 

Neither Nick nor Jacqui are in the parking lot to see Greg and David standing side-by-side, both studying the former’s slashed tires, just as they are not there to hear David breathe out something that sounds suspiciously like ‘idiot’ before he wraps an arm around the other man in an awkward, one-armed embrace. They are not there to see Greg sag a little into the clumsy hug and laugh shakily, nor are they there when the CSI tilts his head and just _looks_ at David for a moment, and then makes a quiet, tired remark about how David seems to have been right about idiots in Las Vegas. There is, in fact, no one around at all when David looks back, makes a sound that is partly a laugh, almost a huff, and mostly a sigh, and tells him that the idiots in Vegas are _kittens_ compared to the morons in LA, and then captures Greg’s mouth with his before the other man can even think of a response. 

Afterwards, they will be unable to fully articulate what that kiss felt like (other than release), but it is as though the connection of their lips sets off a spark, and fire ignites in their veins. David feels the cement turn to ashes and then finally to nothing at all, and his weariness evaporates like mist, while the fire boils Greg’s blood (and yet there is no pain, only relief, as the poison is burned away). It is an intense, _intense_ antidote, and he gathers the tatters that make up his sanity closely around himself and kisses the other man back. 

Nick doesn’t know anything about the slashed tires or the kiss until he gets home to an ecstatic, long-winded message from Greg on his answering machine that only vaguely informs Nick that Greg’ll come by and get his stuff the next day. It takes him two repeats of the message to figure out that Greg and David are back together, and then Nick gives into the urge to call Jacqui to tell her the good news. Somehow she ends up at his front door, offering to help pack up Greg’s things (while surreptitiously examining every single one of Greg’s personal belongings, of course). 

And a few miles away, while Nick and Jacqui pack up Greg’s belongings (and Jacqui makes snide remarks, both about Greg’s half-dozen hair products and the ugly A &amp; M rug Nick has in his living room), David rolls his eyes and tells Greg to stop being such a baby and suck it up as the other man suddenly realizes he’ll be without his precious Lucky Charms the next morning and begins making pathetic noises; David is startled and a little disturbed at the near-blissful expression that crosses Greg’s face at the insult. 

Later on, Greg will think to himself how it’s funny (in a wonderful, you’ve-won-a-million-dollars-just-before-the-bank-can-forclose-on-your-house sort of way), how even though things can turn to shit, they somehow work out anyway.   



End file.
